ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the findings from a process-oriented study on institutional translators’ translation processes focusing on their allocation of cognitive resources and the types of activities performed and their use of digital resources during translation. Screen recorded data, captured online and remotely from seven institutional translators working in-house at the European Union (EU), are analyzed. The findings show that institutional translators spend only half of the time drafting translation, and that a considerable amount of time is spent consulting digital resources, the majority of which are developed and maintained by the EU institutions. In addition, the recorded screen data show that legal domain text more frequently prompts resource consultation than press release text. Automatically generated suggestions by the institutions’ translation tool demand the translators’ evaluation of translation memory and machine translation output. As much as 50% of translation drafting involves evaluation of automated translation output, whereas from scratch translation is considerably less prominent. The study’s findings provide a unique process-oriented perspective on what competences are necessary in an institutional translation context, highlighting the need to develop specialized technological and post-editing competences.
